Basketball

By Djack

Last night was a strange night for sure, the first time in 20 years the Lakers would play a basketball game at the Staples Center without Kobe Bryant on the roster. The post Kobe era began and it couldn't have gotten off to a more electric start. The stadium was rocking all night long, the city saw that they had bright things ahead with this young core, and the Lake Show 2.0 showed us exactly why LA fans should be ecstatic about the future. Both the Lakers and Rockets got off to hot starts in the scoring department as they both put up 38 points in the first. The tempo would slow down in the second for the Lakers, the Rockets on the other hand continued to keep their foot on the gas, and went into halftime with an 8 point lead. Last years Lakers would've rolled over, came out flat in the third, and would end getting blown out by 30, thankfully this new core has a new mindset, which is win. Jordan Clarkson led the charge offensively for the Laker scoring 25 off the bench, wasn't their a guy on this website that said Jordan Clarkson would win 6th man this year, oh yeah, ME. Clarkson shined in the 6th man roll, he shot 8/12, and scored as many points as he had minutes played, not a bad start to the season for our oldest young guy. Julius Randle and D'Angelo Russell who were both rookies last season, showed that they're already taking that next step. Randle had 18 points, 7 boards, and 6 assists, showing just why he is such a unique and all around great talent. Russell dropped 20 points, shooting 40% from three, and orchestrating the offense for most of the game. Brandon Ingram played his first game in the association and he filled his role nicely, gave us 9 points off the bench on 4/6 shooting, not a bad start to a hopefully long and illustrious career. The role players for the Lakers like Mozgov, Deng, Swaggy P, and Lou Will, well they could've been better, but the young upstarts on the roster were able to do enough to win this game. The Lakers would outscore Houston 30-18 in the 4th quarter to win the first game of the season, was I shocked, absolutely, do I now expect a lot more from this team all of the sudden, absolutely, do I think we can now make the playoffs this year, probably not. I don't want to get carried away, we may have beat a team that was in the playoffs last year, but let's see if the young guns can consistently play this way night in and night out, if they can, we're going to the playoffs for sure.